Joe Rogan Experience #2301 - Ben Lamm

Ben Lamm 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) All right, we're up. What's up, Ben?

Ben Lamm 0:14 Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:15 My pleasure. Very nice to meet you, man. So, uh, why don't you, instead of me ex- why don't you explain to people what you do?

Ben Lamm 0:22 So, I'm, uh, the CEO and co-founder of a company called Colossal Biosciences. We're the world's first de-extinction and species preservation company.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Yeah. And-

Ben Lamm 0:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:33 ... uh, that is a wild thing. I mean, this is, uh, essentially, um, literally wild. This is essentially real life Jurassic Park.

Ben Lamm 0:41 Yeah, we get to Jurassic Park c- occasionally. Like, believe it or not, we get to that.

Joe Rogan 0:45 (coughs) Of course. I mean-

Ben Lamm 0:46 I gotta drop my hydrogen tablet in there, so-

Joe Rogan 0:48 Oh, you do those? The Gary Brecka ones, right?

Ben Lamm 0:49 Oh, yeah. I'm all in.

Joe Rogan 0:50 Those are great.

Ben Lamm 0:50 Yeah, so.

Joe Rogan 0:51 Yeah, I love those. Um-

Ben Lamm 0:52 I just didn't want you to think it was, we were going a different direction-

Joe Rogan 0:55 How did you get started even thinking about doing something like this?

Ben Lamm 0:59 So, I kind of fell into it. I didn't plan, I didn't wake up and say, "I saw Jurassic Park, I'm super stoked, I love animals, I wanna go work on this." Um, I'm just a weirdly curious person. So, there's this guy named George Church, and if you don't know George, you should look him up. He's the father of synthetic biology. He's at Harvard University. He's f- six foot seven with narcolepsy. He's just the best, right? So, if you've ever had him on, he may fall asleep during the podcast, but he's just, he's the absolute best. He's a genius. And I thought, uh, my background's in software and just building teams of people that are smarter than me, right? And so, I, I was interested in synthetic biology, this idea that we could engineer life, and that we could use AI and compute to make it even better. Like, how do we do directed evolution and how, and how that can apply to, like, crops and animals and all kinds of stuff. So, I get on the phone with George, and I ask him my questions. He answers them in, like, six seconds 'cause he's a genius. And then I start asking about all the other weird stuff that's coming out of his lab. In that process, he's like, "You know, I've also been working on mammoths and other things." I was like, "Wait, wait, what?" And I was like, "If you had one project, w- what, is it this mammoth project?" And then he went down this whole path about how he'd bring back mammoths, reintroduce them in the Arctic, help the ecosystem, use those technologies for conservation, use those technologies for human healthcare. And I kind of thought it was a fucking joke. I literally thought that, like, the smartest man I've ever met and been on the phone with was a joke. Well, then I stayed up all night just googling George, and there was this weird mammoth through line. Whether it was in 60 Minutes or, you know, Stephen Colbert, or whatever he was in, there was this weird mammoth through line, where he was just obsessed with these mammoths. And everyone kind of wanted him to do this. So, I called him back the next day. Seven days later, I'm in his lab and we were off to the races on, okay, we're gonna try to go build a company to bring back extinct species.

Joe Rogan 2:39 So, how do you decide what to start with?

Ben Lamm 2:42 So, we started with the mammoth first, right, 'cause George, you know, uh, had been working on it for eight years. We needed his core technologies. Uh, we thought that there was a huge application to elephant conservation. There was some ecological modeling that had been done that shows that ma- the reintroduction of mammoths back into the wild, uh, could actually have a net benefit to the ecosystem. Um, and so that was an easy place to start. After we launched, the company went crazy viral. And all these other folks from de-extinction research started calling us, like folks from, like, the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, which looks like a mythical creature, it's awesome.

Joe Rogan 3:14 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 3:15 Um, the, uh, Beth Shapiro with the dodo, everyone just started calling us and then we just started expanding, you know, our, our entire set.

Joe Rogan 3:22 So, how does one do this? So like, let's, uh, before we get to what you showed me earlier, which is fucking amazing-

Ben Lamm 3:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:29 ... before that, how does one do this? Like, (clears throat) w- from what I understand, you have to take the gene of an Indian elephant, which is the closest thing to a mammoth.

Ben Lamm 3:38 Yeah, let me walk through the whole process.

Joe Rogan 3:40 Please, yeah.

Ben Lamm 3:40 So, first you have to find ancient DNA, which is pretty shitty on a good day. So, the minute we take DNA out of our bodies or out of anything, it starts to degrade at an insanely rapid rate. So, we definitely need, uh, to find a lot of samples. So, we actually have about 109 mammoth samples ranging from 3,000 years old to 1.2 million years old, which is awesome.

Joe Rogan 4:01 Wow.

Ben Lamm 4:02 But it's also fragmented. It's like, it's like a shitty jigsaw puzzle that you don't know what the box is and someone's stolen part of the puzzle. And then, oh, by the way, people have taken other puzzle pieces and put them in there. So, there's all kinds of-

Joe Rogan 4:12 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 4:12 ... problems with that. So, this is really an AI and compute problem. It's not as much a human problem. So, you have to get a lot of samples first, and then you have to start mapping them to their closest living relative. And genotyping allows us to understand that that's Asian elephants, right? So, Asian elephants are 99.6% the same as mammoths.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 4:30 They're actually closer related to mammoths than they are to African elephants.

Joe Rogan 4:35 Really?

Ben Lamm 4:36 Yeah, which always blows people's mind. That, and the fact that mammoths were alive when we were building the pyramids, or aliens or whoever was building the pyramids.

Joe Rogan 4:42 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 4:42 Like, like literally, like, humans were building the pyramids while mammoths existed. And sometimes that blows people's mind 'cause they always think of them as in this, like, weird, like, uh, prehistoric, like, 65 million years old dinosaur, dinosaur.

Joe Rogan 4:54 When, when did they go extinct?

Ben Lamm 4:56 Uh, so the last one went extinct about 4,000 years ago-

Joe Rogan 4:59 Really?

Ben Lamm 4:59 ... uh, on Wrangel Island. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:01 Wow.

Ben Lamm 5:02 So, they've been around a while, they were around for a long time.

Joe Rogan 5:03 4,000 years ago.

Ben Lamm 5:04 I know, they weren't, I mean, now, they appeared about two and a half million, um, years ago, as far as we understand. And, uh, they were mostly a Pleistocene species. But as we moved into the Holocene and kind of the period that we're in right now, they existed. They existed all the way up until they had this, like, small genetic bottleneck on Wrangel Island.

Joe Rogan 5:22 Wow. And where is Wrangel Island?

Ben Lamm 5:24 Uh, it's northeast of Siberia.

Joe Rogan 5:27 Whoa. And they just, was it a small island, they just ran out of resources there? Like, what happened?

Ben Lamm 5:33 Well, there's a couple different theories, right? One of the theories, uh, with Wrangel Island is that they actually, uh, uh, there's lots of inbreeding. So, there's lots of, like, genetic bottleneck which happened 'cause there's not a different species there.

Joe Rogan 5:46 How large is Wrangel Island?

Ben Lamm 5:47 I'm not quite sure.

Joe Rogan 5:49 Can you give me a photo again, Jamie?Okay.

Ben Lamm 5:52 And so essentially though, um, Wrangel Island and then, um, uh, there's another island called St. Paul Island, which is also between Alaska and, and the United, and, uh, Russia, also is where they were. Those are kind of the last two places that, that we know mammoths existed today.

Joe Rogan 6:07 And they died out 4,000 years ago.

Ben Lamm 6:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:09 So it's fairly small.

Ben Lamm 6:09 And now, now some actually... There is actually a, a another working hypothesis that-

Joe Rogan 6:14 Oh yeah, it's really small.

Ben Lamm 6:14 ... they actually ran out of water, they ran out of access to fresh water on the island.

Joe Rogan 6:17 Oh, wow.

Ben Lamm 6:18 So some combination of genetic bottleneck and that occurred.

Joe Rogan 6:22 Wow. 4,000 years is so recent.

Ben Lamm 6:25 I know, it's, it's crazy recent, right?

Joe Rogan 6:27 Jamie, can you please pull up a photo of an Asian elephant, uh, versus a African elephant?

Ben Lamm 6:33 And they're actually, mammoths, because there's a l- you know... Mammoths themselves, yeah. Mammoths themselves are close related to the Asian elephant. They have that-

Joe Rogan 6:44 Which is on the left?

Ben Lamm 6:44 Yeah, which is on the left. So they have that dome cranium, they have the small ears.

Joe Rogan 6:48 Mm.

Ben Lamm 6:48 They have a little bit of a hump structure. Um, you know, mammoths, because they had these massive, massive tusk, right? And, um, you know, you've talked to lots of folks in, in kind of the mammoth world. They actually, you know, moved their heads quite slowly, they had to, you know, they had to have this entire ridge of es- extra muscle in order to do that. But one of the things that's awesome also about the, uh, Asian elephants is some Asian elephants, uh, some of the ones that are born actually have... They look, they, they're not mammoth-like, but they have a lot of fur on them, and then they kind of lose it over time.

Joe Rogan 7:18 Wow. Um, so are those the ones that you would find, like, in Thailand?

Ben Lamm 7:22 Uh, yes. And, um, Thailand and then parts of, uh, uh, different parts of India, in the Indian subcontinent.

Joe Rogan 7:28 I actually rode one of those once-

Ben Lamm 7:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:30 ... with my family.

Ben Lamm 7:31 Oh, did you go to th-

Joe Rogan 7:31 I don't recommend it.

Ben Lamm 7:32 Did you go to one of those places that you, like-

Joe Rogan 7:34 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 7:34 ... take care of them?

Joe Rogan 7:34 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 7:35 And then...

Joe Rogan 7:35 You, you have to, like, get a relationship with them.

Ben Lamm 7:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:38 So you feed them sugarcane and you wash them-

Ben Lamm 7:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:40 ... and you, you know, you play nice with them for, like, a while.

Ben Lamm 7:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:44 For like a couple hours. It was, like, at least an hour. You're just hanging out with them-

Ben Lamm 7:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:47 ... petting them and, and then once they decide you're cool, they let you.

Ben Lamm 7:51 Then they'll let you hang. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:51 They let you ride them.

Ben Lamm 7:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:53 But, uh, my whole family rode them and I was, like, totally opposed to it. I was like, "I'm doing it just 'cause you guys want to do it." I would just want to feed them.

Ben Lamm 8:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:01 I just want to hang out with them.

Ben Lamm 8:01 Hang out with them, yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:02 They just felt weird. My daughter fell off, I think twice. One of, uh, one- my youngest daughter fell off once, at least, and I was like, "Do, do we know that this elephant wants us riding it?"

Ben Lamm 8:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:12 Like, you know what I mean? It's kind of a weird thing.

Ben Lamm 8:14 Yeah. It's a weird thing, right? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:15 And then afterwards you get in the, the water and you wash them-

Ben Lamm 8:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:19 ... and, and everything, and I just kind of hung out with them.

Ben Lamm 8:22 I'd be cool with any-

Joe Rogan 8:22 They're very sweet.

Ben Lamm 8:23 I don't think I'd want to ride one. Um, I would just... I like being, uh, you know, around them, you know, feeding them.

Joe Rogan 8:27 I think there's a video on my Instagram of it. Yeah, there is. There definitely is, because she was eating a log. I was like, "Uh, why are you eating a log?" (laughs)

Ben Lamm 8:35 Yeah. Well, so-

Joe Rogan 8:36 It's just weird. They're, they're so enormous, but they're really, like, peaceful and chill.

Ben Lamm 8:42 And incredibly smart.

Joe Rogan 8:43 Yes.

Ben Lamm 8:43 And they're, they have incredible pack dynamics, right?

Joe Rogan 8:46 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 8:46 So they live in a herd. They've even had all these different examples where they also adopt other animals. I don't know if you've seen any of these videos, but-

Joe Rogan 8:52 Oh yeah, so here it is. So this is a few years ago in Thailand, and this is, uh, an Asian elephant just chilling with this elephant. Yeah, 2018. Okay, there it is. It was really cool.

Ben Lamm 9:08 Yeah, it's awesome.

Joe Rogan 9:08 It's just, it's co- Th- it's just cool to be around them. They're just a fascinating animal.

Ben Lamm 9:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:12 Just the bi- the biodiversity of Earth, the fact that that thing exists, it's enormous.

Ben Lamm 9:18 Yeah. They're... This enormous thing with this, like, robotic potential arm.

Joe Rogan 9:22 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 9:22 Yeah, it's crazy.

Joe Rogan 9:22 As long as you're cool to them, they're cool to you.

Ben Lamm 9:25 Yeah, they sense it, right?

Joe Rogan 9:26 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 9:26 Like, and I mean we see that nature with a lot of animals, right? If you sense it and they, they don't feel like they're, you know, being backed into a corner or fearful-

Joe Rogan 9:33 Right.

Ben Lamm 9:33 ... then they're not going to be around that, so...

Joe Rogan 9:34 Right.

Ben Lamm 9:35 Some of our animals I've been around and they're starting to get quite large, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point.

Joe Rogan 9:39 Yes.

Ben Lamm 9:39 Um, that... Uh, yeah, at some point though you're still kind of like, they are a wild animal, so you have to maintain some level of healthy distance.

Joe Rogan 9:46 Yeah. So w- let's just get right to it. So-

Ben Lamm 9:48 Wait, wait d-

Joe Rogan 9:49 No?

Ben Lamm 9:49 We n- Do you want to finish the process and-

Joe Rogan 9:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah, please.

Ben Lamm 9:51 So, okay, so we have the ancient a- uh, ancient, uh, genomes that we have to collect and assemble.

Joe Rogan 9:56 Right.

Ben Lamm 9:56 And that's... A lot of people just think of us in the lab, like just a bunch of people in the lab. But that's like some Indiana Jones shit. Like, we were literally going into the permafrost and, like, collecting dead samples from, uh, the permafrost which, you know, you've had, you know, John Reese on here, it's disgusting.

Joe Rogan 10:11 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 10:11 It's, it smells like death. It literally... I mean, you're, it- I guess it is death. It's just over time piled up death. And-

Joe Rogan 10:18 Have you visited John?

Ben Lamm 10:18 Yeah. Yeah, I've v- I visited John.

Joe Rogan 10:20 You went to the boneyard?

Ben Lamm 10:21 Yeah, I went to the boneyard.

Joe Rogan 10:22 What's it like there?

Ben Lamm 10:22 It's, it's crazy. It's exactly what you'd expect. I, I didn't know John. Uh, so I'm on the board of trustees at the Explorers Club, so we take these expeditions. We did an expedition to Alaska to do mammoth retrieval, and then we're also doing some cultural, um, uh, studies with some of the indigenous people groups around mammoths. Like, "Do you want mammoths back? Is this a good idea," right? Because we try to be pretty inclusive. And, uh, they were like, "Oh, we got to meet the biggest landowner in Alaska, John." And I was like, "Okay, great. I'm excited." So I go meet him. We pull up, he's in a different car and he's like... And I think he wanted us to follow him. He's like, "Get in." I was like, "O- okay."

Joe Rogan 10:57 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 10:57 And he's a big dude.

Joe Rogan 10:58 He's enormous.

Ben Lamm 10:58 Yeah, I'm not that big of a dude, right?

Joe Rogan 11:00 No, John's a giant.

Ben Lamm 11:01 Especially after, especially after Gary Breck has been working with me, I'm a smaller dude, right? And so, like, I literally, uh, uh, get in. I get in the car. There's a s- there's a bunch of stickers and there's one that has a- butterflies on it, uh, that says, "Give zero fucks." And I was like... And then there's, and he's like, "Just move the gun over." So I move the gun over and he goes, "Listen." And this is the first words out of his mouth to me. "If I stop short, you hand me that gun." And I was like... I didn't even ask a follow-up question 'cause like what do you do when you get in the car w- with John (laughs) and he says, "You hand me that gun. If I stop quick and I say hand me that gun, you hand me that gun." I was like, "That's awesome." And he showed me around the-

Joe Rogan 11:34 What kind of gun was it?

Ben Lamm 11:35 Uh, it was just some type of rifle. So-

Joe Rogan 11:37 So it was just grizzlies?

Ben Lamm 11:38 I assume it was for grizzlies, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:39 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 11:40 Or bears or, you know, something large.

Joe Rogan 11:42 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 11:43 But then he showed me around the boneyard and showed me his collection and he was completely... I mean, he didn't know us from anybody. He just opened up everything to us, right? And he's like, "Let me show you all this." Showed us his skull. He actually has a, a warehouse, I don't know if you...... ever discloses where it is. But he has a warehouse wh- where he has some of the greatest specimens ever.

Joe Rogan 12:01 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 12:01 So, it's cool. You should go, it's cool.

Joe Rogan 12:03 I do want to go.

Ben Lamm 12:03 It's, it-

Joe Rogan 12:03 He's an amazing guy. I love that guy.

Ben Lamm 12:04 Yeah. He's a, and he's a cool, and he's a cool guy. And then, you know, being in the mammoth researcher business, uh, we're like, "Oh, we'd love to, y- we'd love to s- you know, take, use some of your samples. Can we take them?" And he's like, "No." And he was very honest, and he told this, and that's like, before your podcast with him, we kind of learned that story, right?

Joe Rogan 12:20 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 12:20 And so, that's what sucks is how, like, some people can ruin it for everybody.

Joe Rogan 12:23 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 12:24 You know, 'cause he's, you know, he, outside of Fairbanks, it's not the easiest place to build a, you know, biocontainment level three lab. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:30 Right.

Ben Lamm 12:31 Um, but he's like, but he's over, he's like, "You build a lab here, you can use whatever you want." But he's like, "The bones stay here." So, he's very consistent with his messaging.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Well, you know the whole deal with the Museum of Natural History, right?

Ben Lamm 12:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:43 Yeah, so-

Ben Lamm 12:44 And I totally believe it. I totally believe it.

Joe Rogan 12:45 Well, it's a fact now.

Ben Lamm 12:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:46 They found these bones in the East River-

Ben Lamm 12:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:48 ... exactly where they told them to drop it off. They have steppe bison f- fragments-

Ben Lamm 12:53 Yes, I've seen it.

Joe Rogan 12:54 ... and wooly mammoth fragments. So they know that they're there.

Ben Lamm 12:56 Yeah, and well, I mean, you, you've built a relationship with John. He's just a normal no bullshit kind of guy.

Joe Rogan 13:01 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 13:02 He's like, "You stole this stuff. Give it back."

Joe Rogan 13:04 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 13:04 Y- or he's also like, "Hey, if you want to come work on it, come on." Like, he's very collaborative.

Joe Rogan 13:09 It's also, it's like, what, what do you guys have? Like, why are you keeping that shit in a basement?

Ben Lamm 13:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:14 Like, what is that?

Ben Lamm 13:14 I mean, when we do work, you know, outside of the expeditions of collecting ancient DNA, DNA, when we do work, we also work with museums, right? And so when you go to, like, the catacombs of the museums, and it's exactly what you think of as l- like, the Vatican archives, right? You go down to, like, sub-basement four of the Smithsonian, and it's just rows and rows and rows of taxidermy animals that you've never seen. It's got, like, little drawers and boxes, and they're like, "Oh, uh, this is giant sloth poop." And I was like, "I didn't know there was giant sloth poop."

Joe Rogan 13:43 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 13:43 They're like, "Yes, and we think there's DNA." And I was like, "Well, this is like, you know, the card catalog of, like, all spe- of all, like, dead species."

Joe Rogan 13:50 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 13:50 But it's not on display for the public. It's just in a basement.

Joe Rogan 13:54 And is it extensively archived? They know where everything is? Or is there some stuff down there-

Ben Lamm 13:58 I mean, there, I, I-

Joe Rogan 13:59 ... that they don't know what it is?

Ben Lamm 14:00 I wouldn't say that they are the, at least any museum, they have a l- they, I think they have a lot more than they know. I don't see it in, like, massive computer systems. 'Cause we asked for inventory lists, and, you know, like, "What's the sho-

Joe Rogan 14:10 What's also the-

Ben Lamm 14:10 ... what's the shopping list?"

Joe Rogan 14:11 It's been over 100 years they've been doing this.

Ben Lamm 14:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:13 So people have come and gone.

Ben Lamm 14:14 Oh, they'll pull out, yeah, and they'll pull out drawers that have, like, Darwin's name on it and stuff like that.

Joe Rogan 14:19 Whoa.

Ben Lamm 14:19 I mean, that's how we did the thylacine. We actually found, in a cup about this size, we actually found what's called, we call it the miracle pup, where they shot the mother, they took the three joeys, the, the babies, killed the three pups, and they put one of them in formaldehyde. And we got a 98% complete genome from the first sample of that pup.

Joe Rogan 14:39 Wow.

Ben Lamm 14:39 But they didn't even know they had it. They also, uh, uh, on the thylacine, which I'm sure we'll talk more about more later, they also found, uh, a head in a bucket. They didn't even, it was the mom's head. So we actually knew, we could actually look at the genetic, uh, relation between the two. And they actually found, they didn't know they had the head in the bucket. They just had a head in a bucket. They opened it up, it was marked thylacine. They opened it up, and there was a full thylacine skull in there. There's pictures of it online and everything. And we used that to get to a 99.9% complete genome, because we also had the ancestry of the two, of the, uh, uh, pup and mother.

Joe Rogan 15:12 Wow.

Ben Lamm 15:12 Yeah. So there's, there's some probably treasure troves in some of these museums that aren't being, you know, fully utilized.

Joe Rogan 15:18 So, if you have 98% or you have 99%, what, what's the process of-

Ben Lamm 15:24 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:24 ... going from that?

Ben Lamm 15:25 So-

Joe Rogan 15:26 So here's the head.

Ben Lamm 15:26 Yeah. There's the head, there's the, uh, head in the bucket.

Joe Rogan 15:29 Wow.

Ben Lamm 15:29 So, Andrew Pask, who leads our, um, uh, in partnership with University of Melbourne, leads our thylacine work. And, uh, yeah, that's the head in the bucket. I mean, there's soft tissue, there's teeth, there's petrous bones, which we'll talk about at some point.

Joe Rogan 15:40 Do you buy into any of these sightings?

Ben Lamm 15:43 No. I did. So, Andrew Pask, for years, he's been working on it for 15 years. He's amazing, he's awesome. Uh, he's been working on, on like a shoestring budget, and that's part of the problem with de-extinction is nobody's put real capital into it until now. And he's been working on it for 15 years, and he's had people send him, you know, uh, poop, uh, uh, clippings from, you know, hair, and all this stuff over the years. They just send it to him, and then he loves the thylacine so much, he just sequences it, and he's like, "Nope, it's a dog. You sent me more dog shit. Thanks."

Joe Rogan 16:12 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 16:12 I mean, it's l- it's, it's demoralizing. But, like, when I got into thylacine, you know, we met Andrew, we did a partnership with him. We actually made the largest investment in marsupial research, more than the Australian government. We made a, the largest investment in, in research for marsupial development of anyone. So we do this, um, and then you, you get into the myth of it, right? So you start reading it, right? You start reading, I start reading all the books on the thylacine. I want to be as, I get obsessive about projects. And so, I'm pretty obsessed about extinction right now. And so, got super deep in it, and, uh, then I started calling Pask. I was like, "Hey, I've been watching these YouTube videos, and I kind of think they're still there." And Pask is like, "No, no, stop it. Don't go down that rabbit hole." I, so I, I don't believe that they're there.

Joe Rogan 16:52 Well, why did he say that?

Ben Lamm 16:53 Uh, well, because he's been testing for the last 15 years all over Tasmania, right? So not just southern Australia, but all-

Joe Rogan 16:58 Right.

Ben Lamm 16:58 ... over Tasmania.

Joe Rogan 16:59 So samples, poop and stuff like that?

Ben Lamm 17:01 Samples, just everything.

Joe Rogan 17:01 Right.

Ben Lamm 17:01 Using camera traps. And nobody's s-... I, I think that they officially say that, uh, the thylacine went extinct in 1936.

Joe Rogan 17:09 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 17:10 But probably into the late '40s and early '50s, they still existed. But, I mean, I think you, I think it's very unlikely that one still exists. It'd make our lives a lot easier if they existed.

Joe Rogan 17:19 Forrest really believes in it.

Ben Lamm 17:20 He does. He thinks they're in Papua New Guinea.

Joe Rogan 17:22 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 17:24 Because-

Joe Rogan 17:24 Because of sightings?

Ben Lamm 17:25 Yeah. He said he thinks in the western part of Papua New Guinea, in the mountains, uh, that-

Joe Rogan 17:29 And also incredibly remote area.

Ben Lamm 17:31 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:32 Very difficult.

Ben Lamm 17:32 And, and, and the separation of that topography separates the, uh, Papua New Guinea, um, uh, singing dogs, which could be competitive for them for predator/prey, uh, from where the thylacine sightings were-

Joe Rogan 17:44 What's a singing dog?

Ben Lamm 17:46 Uh, it's, it's just another large canid that has a unique howl.

Joe Rogan 17:49 Oh, wow.

Ben Lamm 17:50 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 17:51 What does it sound like?

Ben Lamm 17:51 It, it still exists. Well, I, I mean, I, I'm sure Jamie can find the, a video of one.

Joe Rogan 17:54 I want to hear that. I've never heard of this.

Ben Lamm 17:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:55 A singing dog?

Ben Lamm 17:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:57 Wow.

Ben Lamm 17:57 Papa New Guinea singing dogs.

Joe Rogan 17:58 By the way, folks, this is-

Ben Lamm 18:00 Like that.

Joe Rogan 18:00 We're teasing you, because...... we, there's a- this is not just theoretical.

Ben Lamm 18:04 Yeah. So, we'll-

Joe Rogan 18:05 This is what's gonna get crazy.

Ben Lamm 18:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:06 This, this-

Ben Lamm 18:06 It's gonna get weird.

Joe Rogan 18:07 This podcast is gonna blow your fucking mind. Go ahead, Jamie. Opera singers- That's- was the sound- Aw.

Ben Lamm 18:15 These rare animals have a knack for holding a tune, even to an exact key.

Joe Rogan 18:23 Opera singers love these- Aw, they're so cute.

Ben Lamm 18:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:26 They're so cu- p- do people keep them as pets?

Ben Lamm 18:28 Uh...

Joe Rogan 18:28 That looks like a dog-dog.

Ben Lamm 18:30 Yeah. It looks like a dog-dog.

Joe Rogan 18:30 That looks like a dog that would be at the park.

Ben Lamm 18:32 There are wild, there are wild dogs in, in Papua New Guinea, but I'm sure people have domesticated them.

Joe Rogan 18:36 Wow. Pretty fucking cool dogs.

Ben Lamm 18:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:39 And hanging out with a fox.

Ben Lamm 18:41 So, once you have enough of that DNA, right, from all the different samples and you can assemble it, you then have to build comparative genomic models to its closest living relatives, in the case of the mammoth, the, the, the Asian elephant. But, I'm from software, so I just assumed there's like the, you know, Google Cloud of DNA. Like, we've backed ... like, we've all done 23andMe before it went bankrupt, right? So-

Joe Rogan 19:01 Right.

Ben Lamm 19:01 ... we should assume that ... I assumed that the government or someone backed up and had kind of like the 23andMe of all species.

Joe Rogan 19:08 Right.

Ben Lamm 19:08 That doesn't exist.

Joe Rogan 19:09 Wow.

Ben Lamm 19:10 Which is insane. So, there's like-

Joe Rogan 19:11 That is insane.

Ben Lamm 19:11 ... there's no backup. There's no like Noah's Ark bio vault for life, like kinda like the seed vaults. That doesn't exist. And so, we're actually petitioning the US government to help put a massive project together to help bio-bank. It's starting with just American mega- megafauna and keystone species. So, that doesn't exist at all, and so ... So then you ... So then Colossal had to go out and go build reference genomes for all the species, like the closest living relatives for all the species that we're working on.

Joe Rogan 19:36 So, this is the question. If you have, say let's go to w- woolly mammoth.

Ben Lamm 19:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:40 So, if you have woolly mammoth and you have 99%, how do you bridge that gap?

Ben Lamm 19:44 So-

Joe Rogan 19:44 How do you, how do you create-

Ben Lamm 19:46 That's synthetic biology. So, you never have to get to 100%. Right? You need to get to probably-

Joe Rogan 19:51 Synthetic biology.

Ben Lamm 19:52 Synthetic biology. That's where you are using all of these different genetic tools, probably you've heard of CRISPR, all these other things.

Joe Rogan 19:58 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 19:58 Genetics, you know, which is ... It, it knockout, it breaks the DNA. It's not the- always the best tool. We can now actually make individual edits, uh, to ... When you think of the DNA double, you know, helix, right? In those rungs of the ladder?

Joe Rogan 20:11 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 20:11 Those individuals are called nucleotides. We can change the letters. Like, that's how precise we can be. We can say, "At spot, you know, four million eight, I need to change that letter." And so, you change that letter. And then other times, you actually synthesize big blocks of DNA. So, when you notice that in the mammoth and in, in, in the, uh, Asian elephant there's a difference, and if it's in these certain like coat, protein coating regions, in all these different regions of the genome that drive phenotypes or physical like attributes, like you know, curved tusk, domed cranium, small ears, the subcutaneous fat layer, um, and uh, and then hair and, and coat color. You can actually then engineer that into the Asian elephant, right? 'Cause you're only looking ... You, you're only really looking at that 0.4% difference. Right? It's still a lot of numbers, but you're only looking at that. And so, the better you can be at software and the better you can be using AI and, and computer models, the less edits you have to make, right? 'Cause you're really just trying to target those core phenotypes.

Joe Rogan 21:05 Right. Are, are there specific genes that regulate size? 'Cause they're, they're larger than-

Ben Lamm 21:09 It's, it's a, it's a com- ... So, mammoths were about the same size. They're a little bit bigger than Asian elephants, a little bit smaller than African elephants.

Joe Rogan 21:14 Oh, okay.

Ben Lamm 21:15 So, um, there were uh, 11, you know, everyone argues over the definition of speciation 'cause it's a stupid concept that humans made, not nature made. And so, there are 11 different types of mammoths out there that evolved in different, uh, in different ways and some of them were larger. But the woolly mammoth, the one that we're pursuing that has that woolly, uh, uh, phenotype, it was about the size of a Asian elephant.

Joe Rogan 21:38 And-

Ben Lamm 21:39 But there ... To your question on size, it's actually a cluster of genes. We're finding more and more about how different genes also map across, uh, all species as well.

Joe Rogan 21:49 And so, there's specific characteristics that these animals have, one of them being the big furry coats, that you guys ... What did you do with mice?

Ben Lamm 21:58 (laughs) We made woolly mice.

Joe Rogan 22:00 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 22:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:01 See if you can find that.

Ben Lamm 22:02 The, the only, the only like unintended consequences was they were cute as fuck.

Joe Rogan 22:07 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 22:07 Like, they ... People lost their minds, right? Like, we're ... There's, there's ... I was, I was on the phone recently with a, you know, moderately aggressive, um, journalist, and, uh, and it was going quite poorly (laughs) as some calls go.

Joe Rogan 22:20 Moderately aggressive?

Ben Lamm 22:21 Mod-

Joe Rogan 22:21 They were being aggressive in what way?

Ben Lamm 22:23 They-

Joe Rogan 22:23 Like, "Why are you doing this?"

Ben Lamm 22:24 Some people, some people ... Yeah, they, they ... Everyone likes to fight.

Joe Rogan 22:26 Look how cute!

Ben Lamm 22:28 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 22:29 My daughter actually found this online and wants one.

Ben Lamm 22:31 Yeah. So, we get that a lot from, from kids.

Joe Rogan 22:32 She wants a woolly mouse. (laughs)

Ben Lamm 22:33 So, every week, every week ... Um, I don't have my laptop. I should probably bring it down here.

Joe Rogan 22:37 Look how cute.

Ben Lamm 22:38 But every week-

Joe Rogan 22:39 Oh, my God. They're adorable.

Ben Lamm 22:41 So, this ... So, these woolly mice aren't just adorable. We basically said, "Look, what are the core genes that drive the hair phenotype or physical attribute of a, of a mammoth, um, from an Asian elephant to a mammoth?" And then because we wanna do this in the most ethical way as possible, there's about 200 million years of genetic divergence between mice and elephants, we didn't just wanna ram mammoth DNA in there and see what happens. So, we looked for the mouse equivalent, right? So, we look for ... Like, all of us have similar genes, so we can try to look for those genes and then edit those genes with the data we got from the mammoth so that we're then not just putting random genes in there that could either hurt the animal or kill them, right, or that may not even be compatible with life, right? So, we try to be really, really thoughtful about ... And the, the woolly mice, um, went like ... It, it went insane. There's people that are like making t-shirt ... There's a meme coin.

Joe Rogan 23:30 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 23:30 Uh, and so we, we made 36 mice. They're all, they're all healthy. There's 36 mice that we made.

Joe Rogan 23:36 Wow.

Ben Lamm 23:36 Um, and what was crazy about it is ... We're excited about it because it shows that the end-to-end process of taking data from an ancient ge- uh, DNA, comparing it to a living animal, making those changes, doing it with 100% efficiency, and that's really important and really hard. So, we did it with 100% efficiency. Yeah, that, that's the, that-

Joe Rogan 23:56 Wow. Look at the difference.

Ben Lamm 23:56 Well, so the, the mouse-

Joe Rogan 23:57 One of them, if it was in a trap you'd be so sad.

Ben Lamm 24:00 Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 24:00 Like, the little guy on the left. If he was in a trap, you'd be like, "Oh, look what we killed." Isn't that funny? Just a little bit of fur.

Ben Lamm 24:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:06 Makes you love them.

Ben Lamm 24:07 And that's the color that we think most mammoths were.

Joe Rogan 24:09 Really?

Ben Lamm 24:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:10 They were like a blonde.

Ben Lamm 24:11 They were like, they were like a golden brown color, right?

Joe Rogan 24:13 Wow.

Ben Lamm 24:13 Because when we pull them out of the permafrost they've been sitting in mud for quite some time.

Joe Rogan 24:17 Oh.

Ben Lamm 24:18 But if you see very fresh mammoths, like from, uh, Siberia and whatnot, like in Yakutsk and other places in Northern Siberia that they actually have, uh, pretty, pretty well preserved mammoths. They actually have kind of a, uh, dirty blonde meets, uh, gold meets brown fur.

Joe Rogan 24:32 Wow. Interesting.

Ben Lamm 24:33 And so when we ... So, we did that and now there's people that are making t-shirts, that aren't us, and pillows that are like, "Legalize woolly mice." I'm like, "They're not illegal."

Joe Rogan 24:42 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 24:42 And then, there, there's a meme account for the guy that did the, like the CRISPR babies, you know, that went in trouble for, you know, making edited babies in China.

Joe Rogan 24:49 In China?

Ben Lamm 24:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 24:50 A meme account-

Joe Rogan 24:51 Oh, wow.

Ben Lamm 24:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:51 So, that's mammoth fur. Wow.

Ben Lamm 24:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:52 Wow.

Ben Lamm 24:53 A meme account, though, uh, actually said on, on X that, that, uh, these are a bio-weapon.

Joe Rogan 24:59 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 24:59 And that Colossals made a bio- ... Like, so the, the weirdness of the woolly mouse went crazy viral. What we were trying to show is that we used our multi- multiplex editing tools, meaning that we edited all of those genes at the same time. Most people edit one gene, let that mouse live. From the second lineage, they'll do one more gene, let that mouse live, and then they'll stack those edits over multiple generations.We've developed a system so that we can deliver all of those edits at one time, all over the genome, get exactly what we want, and then we have this mo- what's called monoclonal screening where we're screening the cells at the end, sequencing all the cells, which is expensive and sounds like overkill. But then we know that none of them have unintended consequences, or off-target effects in the, in the genome, so that we know the mice that we then do cloning with, we know that they'll be healthy.

Joe Rogan 25:46 Mm.

Ben Lamm 25:47 And so, so we try to spend a lot of time, you know, on that, because we're certified by American H- Humane Society. It's the oldest humane organization in the world. And, um, if you've seen the film, it's like, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film," that's those guys.

Joe Rogan 25:59 Right.

Ben Lamm 25:59 So, so we've ended up, um, uh, so, so we really care about kind of not just the de-extinction efforts, the genome engineering efforts, but ensuring that the animals are healthy when they come out. And so, the, the wooly mouse was a really interesting proof of concept. It shows that the edits that we are working on are working right, and we're getting exactly what we predicted.

Joe Rogan 26:18 Is there any plans to sell those?

Ben Lamm 26:19 No. Everyone keeps asking us that.

Joe Rogan 26:21 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 26:21 But you know what? Museums actually are now calling us saying, uh, and, and zoos are calling us saying, "Can we display the wooly mice?" They're like, "It'll drive so much value, it'll teach people about, you know, genetics and whatnot." So, you know, it's, it's not our business model to sell our animals or to sell, you know, wooly mice, but it, w- it's kinda gone crazy.

Joe Rogan 26:39 Is it dangerous, though, to leave these mice in the hands of someone even at a zoo, who decides, "I want more of these"?

Ben Lamm 26:48 Yeah, if we ever, if we ever put them ... I think more likely, we'd put them in a museum for f- that needs to be free, like the Smithsonian or something like that from an education perspective, versus something that's more attraction-based. I think we'd do it more in the case of a museum.

Joe Rogan 27:00 Do you plan on keeping this batch alive?

Ben Lamm 27:03 Yeah, they're gonna live out their normal lives. And, uh-

Joe Rogan 27:05 But you're not gonna make new ones?

Ben Lamm 27:06 Um, we may make new ones-

Joe Rogan 27:08 What if they breed?

Ben Lamm 27:09 ... with new ... These won't, they're all separated. They're all-

Joe Rogan 27:10 Okay.

Ben Lamm 27:10 ... separated by sex. So, we're not gonna have like a Jurassic Park moment where they change. Um, uh, they're all separated by sex. But if you, uh, uh, if Jamie finds a picture of their habitats, they actually live, they live a couple years, but they don't live like t- traditional lab mice that live in, like, a small little cage and all on top of each other.

Joe Rogan 27:28 Mm.

Ben Lamm 27:28 Um, the, they actually live in pretty sweet digs that we made for them. Uh, they're all, yeah, like (laughs) we made-

Joe Rogan 27:36 (laughs) Oh, that's-

Ben Lamm 27:36 We spared no expense. Um-

Joe Rogan 27:37 ... cool little house.

Ben Lamm 27:38 Yeah. And they're big and we, you know, we put fun stuff in them to play with, like, like this. And what's been crazy is, we only named two of them, and we named (laughs) them Chip and Dale-

Joe Rogan 27:46 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 27:46 ... because we, we, people were asking what the names were, and I was like, "Uh, Chip is the only thing that I could think of at the moment." And now, even on X, people are like, "We need pictures of Chip. Where is Chip? We've only seen pictures of Dale." And there's, like, these incredible internet sleuths that are like, "That's not Chip. That's Dale. We need a picture of Chip." So-

Joe Rogan 28:03 Oh, yeah. You can't get involved.

Ben Lamm 28:04 Yeah. So we've just, yeah, we-

Joe Rogan 28:05 Don't, don't get-

Ben Lamm 28:06 We-

Joe Rogan 28:06 ... involved with those people. (laughs)

Ben Lamm 28:07 We've not, we've not leaned in, yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:09 (laughs) You cannot.

Ben Lamm 28:10 We're excited they're excited, but we just can't.

Joe Rogan 28:12 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 28:12 Yeah, we're busy.

Joe Rogan 28:13 So, uh, so this is a new thing. The, the wooly mouse is a new thing.

Ben Lamm 28:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:18 Is there any talk about doing other kind of new things?

Ben Lamm 28:21 So, it's more of a proof of technology. I think that the mouse model, because it's a 20-day gestation versus 22 months in elephants, it's, it's a great way to test phenotypes. 'Cause with, you know, with a, a mammoth, you have three ways to test if you got the edits right. One, you can do molecular tests. You can do DNA sequencing to see if it worked. Uh, two ... I guess there's four. Uh, two, you could grow a mammoth and see if it looks like it, but that's a lot of work and 22 months, like, a lot of gestational time, a lot of money. Uh, I think there's a lot of risk in that. The third, and this is a little weird, we created what's called induced pluripotent stem cells. So we created cells that you can then turn into any type of tissue. So we actually do have mammoth hair follicles growing in a lab, so we have hair growing in Petri dishes in the lab-

Joe Rogan 29:06 Wow.

Ben Lamm 29:06 ... which is pretty cool. If you come see the lab, you, you'll get, uh, the whole Willy Wonka tour of it, which is pretty cool. Um, and then, then the fourth way is mice, right? 'Cause it's like, if we can then engineer them into mice, we can see immediately within 20 days if the edits were working, if there were any unintended consequences that would be detrimental to the animal.

Joe Rogan 29:24 Wow.

Ben Lamm 29:24 So we'll probably make more iterations of the wooly mice. Um, the thylacine's closest living relative is the fat-tailed dunnart, which is a mouse-sized marsupial. And it actually gestates in 13 and a half days versus 20 days, so there's no reason to do it in mice when you can do it immediately in the model species.

Joe Rogan 29:39 Wow.

Ben Lamm 29:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:40 Okay. Um, so how did you make the decision to do what you ultimately did, what you showed me before the show?

Ben Lamm 29:48 Um, so, uh, we're working on the mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo for different reasons. We work with a lot of different private landowners, governments, and indigenous people groups. And, uh, a project that we announced, uh, through our Colossal Foundation, uh, about two and a half years ago is, uh, doing a population genomics map. We talked about bio-banking a little bit. So what we want to understand from the bison that are still here in America, what's genetic diversity? What's been lost, you know? H- what's the number of inbreeding? So we go through this whole process to try to understand, and then we were giving a report back to MHA Nation, Chairman Fox. It's one of the largest, uh, indigenous people groups in the United States, one of the largest tribes based in North Dakota. So we're giving them a report out on this. We, we, we went to their nation, wanted to share this. And, and then, you know, we're curious, so we said, "What other projects would you work on if, if that you, that we could do that's helpful outside of helping bison?" And they said that they, that we needed to help with wolf conservation, and they brought up that. They said that we needed to help with more bison conservation. Uh, they said if we could do stuff around, um, uh, eagles and fish. And so, we kind of got that feedback. And when, um, Chairman Fox was walking me through their, their herital- their, uh, Cultural Heritage Museum, he actually stopped on this incredible picture of, of a white wolf. And he said, "You know, that's the great wolf." And, uh, and he talked about the ancestral knowledge that was passed down and that's been lost, and how many people believed, um, uh, that it could've even been a dire wolf. And I was like, "From Game of Thrones? That's cool. I love the show. That's interesting."

Joe Rogan 31:13 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 31:14 So we did that. We, we talked about that. Um, and then, you know, three months later, I was in North Carolina, and, uh, understanding that, uh, uh, for a completely different meeting around financing. And in that meeting, it, the Red Wolf Program came up. I don't know if you know anything about the red wolf.

Joe Rogan 31:28 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 31:29 But it's kind of a disaster.

Joe Rogan 31:30 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 31:30 You know, it's the only endemic wolf to Amer- that's only endemic to America. It's a red wolf. Uh, it's beautiful. And, uh, there's like 15 left in the wild.... it would- with massive loss of, of genetic diversity, massive bottleneck. And, uh, and I was like, "Wait, we're supposed to be this country of innovation? We can't save our own..." When you think of, like, the American West, right, you think of wolves, you think of, like, uh, you know, eagles soaring, you think of, like, trout- bears catching trout, you, you know, you think of bison. The thought that we could lose one of these amazing icons, like... Uh, we were like, "We have to do something about this."

Joe Rogan 32:03 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 32:03 "We have to figure something out." So, we, we put that kind of on the list, and then in a weird series of events, we've had all of these kids over the last three years sen- and teachers sen- and parents sending us pictures of woolly mammoths, or dodos, or .......................... Like, we get, like, s- boxes of this every single week, which is pretty cool. So, we're gonna make a Colossal Kids Corner, um, at our new, new, uh, labs. And, and in that, we've had all this, some Hollywood talent, like, you know, Tom Brady, others that have invested in the business. They're just excited about it. Most of them learned about it through their kids-

Joe Rogan 32:33 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 32:33 ... kind of like with the woolly mouse with you. And so everyone's excited about it. And then, um, we talked again to MHA Nation. They brought up the dire wolf again. And so we thought maybe there was an opportunity to bring back an American species 'cause dire wolves were only found in, in the US, uh, little, uh, in, in North America, but predominantly in the United States, uh, uh, uh, coastal United States. And, um, we thought if we could do something that could bring back the dire wolf, also, uh, help wolf conservation and bring people from, like, sci-fi, fantasy, and kids more into science and into the conversation around conservation, we thought it was a cool idea, but we had no idea if we could pull it off.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Is there dead dire wolves that were trapped in permafrost or is-

Ben Lamm 33:17 No. Most are... Most of the dire wolf skulls out there, uh, there's thousands of them in La Brea Tar Pits. So, if you go there-

Joe Rogan 33:23 Ah.

Ben Lamm 33:23 ... they have this beautiful wall, but because of heat and aci- acid- acidification, there isn't anything that's protected. Like, there's nothing you can get from that. But, uh, uh, about six years ago, uh, a group, including Beth Shapiro, our chief science officer, uh, sequenced a tooth that was found in a cave, just a single tooth, right? And in that tooth, they actually found a, uh, uh... They actually got 0.15X or coverage of the genome, so they got about 15% of the genome. But that's not really enough. You need to get up to about 10X, meaning that you can read the entire genome about 10 different times so that even if there are gaps, you understuff- understand enough of the core kind of, uh, coding regions that you could bring back that animal. Or-

Joe Rogan 34:05 Is this done by AI? Is this done by programs?

Ben Lamm 34:07 It's done by AI and software, yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:08 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 34:08 So, we, we built, um... Part of our business model is building technologies, uh, to solve these really complicated problems that are much harder to solve than, you know, just solving them for, you know, existing species. Open-sourcing that for conservation for free, but then also taking those technologies that we can monetize for humans and spinning them out. So, our first, uh, computational analysis company was called Form Bio, and we actually spun it out of the business.

Joe Rogan 34:29 So, you have this tooth. You have 1.5.

Ben Lamm 34:32 Yeah, uh, 1.5, so 15% of the genome.

Joe Rogan 34:34 Okay.

Ben Lamm 34:35 Um, and so I went to Beth, who was only an advisor at the time, and said, "Could you re-sample the tooth?" And she's like, "It, it's like, you know, half an inch long." She's like, "It's destructive sampling. Like, it's going to ruin us." Well, could we scour the other museums and see if it's even possible? So, we, we lucked out and that tooth's 13,000 years old. The skull itself is, uh, 72, 73,000 years old. Not exactly sure. Uh, but it was found in a riverbed, um, and it wasn't found in, uh, a riverbed at the mouth of a cave. So, it wasn't found, like, in, in, uh, the permafrost. It also wasn't found in, like, heat and acid- aci- acidification. So, uh, there's a bone in all of us called the petrous bone, which is insanely dense, and it doesn't change a lot from after you're born. It's a great DNA storage. Better than teeth, better than anything.

Joe Rogan 35:19 Where is it?

Ben Lamm 35:19 It's on the... It's, like, s- in the inner ear kind of head area.

Joe Rogan 35:23 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 35:23 And so, um, we got permission from the museum to, uh, very carefully, uh, drill into the back, the underside of the skull, and remove, uh, the petrous bone to see if we could get DNA. And we got really lucky. Between re-sampling the first and, um, the in- in the skull, we ended up getting about 13 to 14X coverage, so that's more than we needed to potentially bring back the dire wolves.

Joe Rogan 35:46 And then what'd you do?

Ben Lamm 35:47 (laughs) Well, and then...

Joe Rogan 35:50 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 35:51 Uh, then we got a knock on the door and it was the, uh... Um, no, so, so we took that DNA-

Joe Rogan 35:54 Can I ask you before we even start with this?

Ben Lamm 35:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:57 The aggressive reporters are... Is it, "You're playing God"?

Ben Lamm 36:02 We-

Joe Rogan 36:02 How do you have the right to do this?

Ben Lamm 36:03 So, it we- it's been a journey. Okay? So, the journey that we've had is when we started the business, we didn't have any scientists. Like, we just didn't, right? They're like, "This is tech bros wanting to see cool animals," and, "Oh, they've only got $16 million in funding, and they don't have any scientists. Ha ha ha." So that was, that was phase one.

Joe Rogan 36:19 Right.

Ben Lamm 36:20 And then we're like, "Oh, well, you know, as an entrepreneur, my job is to hire much smarter people than me."

Joe Rogan 36:25 You smoke cigars?

Ben Lamm 36:25 I do not.

Joe Rogan 36:26 Okay.

Ben Lamm 36:26 Um, Gary's got me on quite a kick, so...

Joe Rogan 36:29 A health kick?

Ben Lamm 36:30 Yeah. So, yeah, I mean-

Joe Rogan 36:31 Cigars aren't bad for you?

Ben Lamm 36:32 Well, I'm not saying they're bad for you. I'm just saying that I-

Joe Rogan 36:34 Allegedly.

Ben Lamm 36:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:36 I- I don't care.

Ben Lamm 36:37 So-

Joe Rogan 36:37 I'll take... This is the last of the, the things that I partake in that are probably bad for you.

Ben Lamm 36:42 Yeah, but you gotta, uh, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Joe Rogan 36:44 I'll have a little-

Ben Lamm 36:44 Everyone's got their vices.

Joe Rogan 36:45 I'll have a little cigar. Um, so, uh, my question, if I was gonna grill you, if I was a reporter, I'd be like, "What, what right do you have to invade the natural process of nature and to inject your curiosity and your ability to create new life?"

Ben Lamm 37:01 I think that we've become...... the apex predator on this planet. And we inject our curiosity and choices every day that we overfish the ocean, we overhunt something. In the case of the thylacine, we, the Australian government put a bounty on its head and killed it off, right? And every time we cut down the rainforest, every, every time we drink hydrogenated water, we are, you know, playing God on some level, right? We are, we are mo- we are change... Humans are very good at changing the natural flow of things.

Joe Rogan 37:30 Mm-hmm. True.

Ben Lamm 37:31 Now, the good news is, is that there's been a lot of work around ecology and understanding what the impacts to rewilding can be, and so it's been really, really helpful for us to understand, you know, um, you know, one of the most successful rewilding programs of all times was reintroducing of 14 or 15 wolves back into Yellowstone.

Joe Rogan 37:51 Right.

Ben Lamm 37:51 And, and looking at, at how the eco- the ecology of the system completely changed. Like, it changed the shape of rivers, you know, because the elk population were just, you know, they were getting fat, they were getting lazy, they weren't migrating. The sick and the old and the weak weren't getting killed off.

Joe Rogan 38:05 Right.

Ben Lamm 38:05 They were spreading disease. They were eating all of the willows and everything along the banks, so therefore, the beavers went away. Beavers are like the most super, you know, climate impact animals that probably exist, 'cause they make wetlands, they make, uh, they, they, uh, cause the rivers and, and ponds to get deeper, so it allows different types of fish and different types of animals. So you have this thing called trophic downgradings, you have this trophic cascading effect when you reintroduce these species. That's it.

Joe Rogan 38:30 That documentary's fascinating.

Ben Lamm 38:31 It's so fascinating.

Joe Rogan 38:32 How wolves changed rivers?

Ben Lamm 38:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:33 Yeah. The... I know people that lived in Montana before the wolf reintroduction, and a lot of people don't like that the wolves are there and, but most of them are elk hunters that were used to something that's just outrageously overpopulated. That's the reality of it.

Ben Lamm 38:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:49 But they were telling me that there was... They had so many elk h- that were living, th- th- they had su- such a large population versus the actual resources that were available, that they had all these crazy hunts that were available over the counter, like you can hunt cows-

Ben Lamm 39:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:05 ... in the snow. So in the middle of the winter, where they can't move good-

Ben Lamm 39:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:09 ... you can just pick 'em off-

Ben Lamm 39:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:10 ... in the snow, because they were just trying to cull the population, they were trying to-

Ben Lamm 39:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:14 ... diminish them.

Ben Lamm 39:14 And that's, and that's not good for the elk pop- population.

Joe Rogan 39:17 No. No, it's not.

Ben Lamm 39:17 Like, it's not only good for the ecosystem, but it's not good for the elk population itself.

Joe Rogan 39:20 Right. Um, I have a good friend who lives in Colorado, he has, uh, a ranch in Colorado and, uh, we were at his place approximately two weeks after they re- reintroduced wolves.

Ben Lamm 39:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:31 So they actually l- reintroduced wolves on his property.

Ben Lamm 39:34 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:34 Um, and he didn't know it was gonna happen before it happened, and all the people around there are ranchers.

Ben Lamm 39:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:40 So already, these five wolves that they've reint- reintroduced, he said killed over a dozen cows and calves. So the problem is... They've killed elk as well.

Ben Lamm 39:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:49 In fact, I took a photo of an elk leg that we found on the ground-

Ben Lamm 39:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:53 ... that the wolves had killed. I'm not a big fan of people getting to vote on whether or not you should do something with wildlife. I'm a big fan on having real wildlife biologists-

Ben Lamm 40:05 Yep.

Joe Rogan 40:05 ... assess situations. And in the case of Colorado, Colorado obviously border- borders Wyoming, and Wyoming has wolves.

Ben Lamm 40:11 Yep.

Joe Rogan 40:12 Wolves were making their way into Colorado-

Ben Lamm 40:14 Yep.

Joe Rogan 40:14 ... already, and they are protected. The problem with reintroducing 'ems, you're, you're essentially asking a wolf that doesn't know the territory to start killing things in that territory.

Ben Lamm 40:23 Yeah, or to stop at a, at a b- imaginary border that doesn't exist.

Joe Rogan 40:26 Right. Th- There's no borders, they go hundreds and hundreds of miles-

Ben Lamm 40:29 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 40:29 ... but the idea that you're doing this and you're doing this where there's ranches is crazy.

Ben Lamm 40:34 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:34 And in Colorado, particularly stupid, because the first batch were literally animals that they had captured because they were killing wildlife.

Ben Lamm 40:42 Yep.

Joe Rogan 40:42 So they, they moved 'em from Oregon to Colorado, where they started killing wildlife.

Ben Lamm 40:49 Started killing wildlife.

Joe Rogan 40:49 Yeah, but they're kill... Excuse me, I'm saying wildlife, what I, what I really meant to say was, uh, animals, agriculture.

Ben Lamm 40:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:55 They're, they're killing domesticated cows, they're, they're killing these, uh, calves and, you know, they're, they're having a real fucking problem with that. Um-

Ben Lamm 41:04 And it, it is something that needs to be continually monitored that shouldn't just be on some random vote of how you feel about it, right? Like it, like-

Joe Rogan 41:13 S- We just can't let people vote on that.

Ben Lamm 41:14 No, I, I, I couldn't-

Joe Rogan 41:15 It's just, too many people live in these high population areas.

Ben Lamm 41:17 I couldn't ag- I couldn't agree more, right? And so like, we as humanity, like if you look at the, the third-leading cause of death of, of elephants, it's human-elephant conflict, right?

Joe Rogan 41:27 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 41:27 Like, we have to, we have to figure these things out.

Joe Rogan 41:29 Yes.

Ben Lamm 41:30 We, we also, we don't want degraded ecosystems, we don't wanna lose species, but you have to be, do... You have to do this in a very thoughtful and measured way, right?

Joe Rogan 41:37 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 41:37 Like with Yellowstone, they're like, "This is big enough ecological preserve, we're tagging the animals-"

Joe Rogan 41:41 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 41:41 "... we're gonna walk and measure it." I, I don't think that it's safe or smart to put any, you know, not just predators, but also like large herbivores in these heavy population-dense areas. We can just, uh, we just un- we have to understand that some of these areas not are lost, but have already been, uh, changed for a different reason, and we, and we-

Joe Rogan 42:00 Yes.

Ben Lamm 42:00 ... need to step back.

Joe Rogan 42:00 And they've achieved homostasis, homeostasis. They've achieved a balance, right?

Ben Lamm 42:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:05 Which is the, the big issue with Colorado right now. And it's going to be the big issue whenever you reintroduce an animal that used to be there and is no longer there.

Ben Lamm 42:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:12 And I think in the case of Montana, I think you're right, and I think that there is an argument that maybe the wolves being there is better.... obviously not if you're a rancher.

Ben Lamm 42:22 Well, the, well, the Colorado ... So, the Colorado stuff is completely gonna destroy all of the stats. So, pre-Colorado, right? So I'm talking about reintroduction into Montana, reintroduction into, uh, parts of Canada, reintroduction into Yellowstone. The red wolf, which is a very small population in nor- in North Carolina. There's been less than five confirmed fatalities in all of North America in the last 100 years.

Joe Rogan 42:46 You mean humans?

Ben Lamm 42:46 Hu- humans. Humans.

Joe Rogan 42:47 Right. And are most of them in Alaska?

Ben Lamm 42:49 Most of them are in Alaska-

Joe Rogan 42:50 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 42:50 ... uh, or in Canada. And then, um, uh, and then it's ... Before Colorado, so I'm not saying w- w- I don't know if the data has ... I don't, I don't think it has the latest from Colorado. But it, uh, it represents 0.02%, uh, o- of deaths asso- associated with, uh, wolves and cattle and livestock, right? And all livestock, not just cattle. And so, the problem is when you go out there and you have a maintained balance that people can understand, and governments actually give subsidies to the ranchers when they get killed by, when they get killed by the, um, by wolves. Um, so that, that ... I think that is a good program, because you have to be fair to the people that are actually ranching. But the problem is, when you're, you're not as thoughtful with the rewilding program and you don't ... and you're not as measured as like what they did in Yell- Yellowstone, and they start encroaching in these areas, then the stats are gonna go crazy.

Joe Rogan 43:36 Right.

Ben Lamm 43:36 And once the stats goes crazy, then you're gonna start looking, uh, to the animals that are the problem, but it's not the animals that are the problem. It was the decision that we gave that power to the masses that were really not informed to make that decision.

Joe Rogan 43:47 Exactly. The problem is, people just have these ideas like, "Wolves are beautiful. They're amazing."

Ben Lamm 43:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:52 "We all love wolves. It's an incredible animal. I'm so happy it exists." Don't put it near where there's a ranch.

Ben Lamm 43:57 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 43:58 You can't vote on that if you live in Denver. That's crazy.

Ben Lamm 44:00 Yeah, if it, if it doesn't-

Joe Rogan 44:01 This is the problem.

Ben Lamm 44:01 ... affect your livelihood, if it-

Joe Rogan 44:02 Right.

Ben Lamm 44:02 ... doesn't affect your, the rest of your animals or your family, yeah, you have to be mindful of that.

Joe Rogan 44:06 There's also they're getting a very skewed perspective because the governor's really interested in it, and his husband is really interested in it. His, his husband apparently is the one who really wanted it to happen. And, you know, you, you have a mandate, so you have to get wolves out by a certain time, and when you're doing it, the only wolves available are wolves that kill livestock, and so you're like, "Fuck it."

Ben Lamm 44:25 Yeah, it's just not.

Joe Rogan 44:26 It's just-

Ben Lamm 44:26 It, it's, it's ... You ha- uh, and, and it ... The ... A lot of the ... So, the project that we'll probably eventually talk about is, uh, we brought in a lot of the teams, uh, so many people that have been on your show, uh, that, uh, know how to do the rewilding the right way over time. Like-

Joe Rogan 44:43 Okay, so this is what ... We'll just get to it. You made a fucking dire wolf.

Ben Lamm 44:47 (laughs) I didn't. Uh-

Joe Rogan 44:48 You guys.

Ben Lamm 44:49 Our, our team, uh, our incredible team, uh, uh, made, uh, three dire wolves so far.

Joe Rogan 44:54 Let's see the photos. Jamie, bust out some photos. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself, because this is truly fucking crazy.

Ben Lamm 45:01 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 45:01 That's the pup.

Ben Lamm 45:02 Yeah. So this is, uh ... So that's actually, uh, Romulus as ... So, we have two boys, Romulus and Remus, uh, founders of Roam, and then, uh, and then we have Khaleesi, who's the new girl.

Joe Rogan 45:13 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 45:13 So, this is Romulus and Remus. Uh, so funny, funny story about this. So, Peter Jackson, uh, from Lord of the Rings, um-

Joe Rogan 45:20 Jamie.

Ben Lamm 45:21 Uh, s- uh, Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings, uh, was actually, uh, one of our investors, and he has this huge museum in Wellington that he's building for all these movie props. And he's like ... We were ... I was sitting in, in Peter's, uh, house with ... He and his, he and his partner Fran, and I was like, "You know," um, uh ... I showed him the video of them howling. He started tearing up and he goes, "This is the first time I've heard a dire wolf, or anyone's heard a dire wolf in 10,000 years." He started ... Well, he like, he like physically, emotionally got chills and started crying. And then he's like, "Well, you know I do have the throne." I was like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I bought the throne last week at auction." It was at, at a, at a private auction from like Sotheby's or someone, right?

Joe Rogan 45:57 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 45:57 And so, so he did, and it just happened to be where the wolves were doing their vet checkup. Like, talk about cosmic coincidence. Incredible, right?

Joe Rogan 46:05 Wow.

Ben Lamm 46:05 And so, um, you know, what you don't see in this photo is you don't see the fact that we have American Humane Society there with three veterinary people. We had six people from our, uh, uh, animal care team.

Joe Rogan 46:16 When you say checkup, you don't vaccinate these little guys, do you?

Ben Lamm 46:18 Uh, they do get ... They ... Because of viruses from that ... they can get from the soil, uh, at s- uh, eight, at eight weeks, they do get basic virus. Uh, they do, they do get basic vaccines.

Joe Rogan 46:30 Oh, were you concerned about that? I mean, you have this animal that you're just-

Ben Lamm 46:33 Yeah, so these are staying on ... You know, like these are not going back into the wild, right?

Joe Rogan 46:37 Right, not yet.

Ben Lamm 46:38 N- ye- n- Right now, they're on a 2,000 acre, uh, secure, expansive ecological preserve with 24/7 care. We have, we have an animal hospital that we built.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Wow.

Ben Lamm 46:47 Uh, people are always like, "You guys raise so much money." And I was like, "Well, it ... The ... Because we didn't just spend it on the labs. You have to spend it on the animal care, the facilities, and whatnot."

Joe Rogan 46:55 Yeah. Let's see-

Ben Lamm 46:55 We have-

Joe Rogan 46:55 ... the photo of the, the actual grown ones, because they're fucking nuts. Um, yeah.

Ben Lamm 47:02 Yeah, so, so this is, uh, Romulus and Remus, uh, in ... Playing in the snow on the preserve when they are, um, uh, three months old. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:10 So three months, how big are they?

Ben Lamm 47:12 Uh, three months, they were north of 45 pounds.

Joe Rogan 47:15 Wow.

Ben Lamm 47:16 So, um-

Joe Rogan 47:17 Look at that face. God, they're so beautiful.

Ben Lamm 47:19 Oh, they just get, they just get ... Like, as they've aged, they've just got more and more beautiful.

Joe Rogan 47:24 So, let's go to the adults, because the adults have crazy characteristics-

Ben Lamm 47:28 Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 47:28 ... that you were saying that you didn't even know they were gonna have.

Ben Lamm 47:30 We, we, we didn't know, right? And so, we, we did ... We, we ended up taking ... Getting a-

Joe Rogan 47:35 Is this a full-grown one?

Ben Lamm 47:37 Uh, n- they're still five months old, so they're 80 pounds at five months. So, wolves typically grow 12 to 14 months. So, it ... they're not full-grown yet.

Joe Rogan 47:45 Wow, and how big is it already?

Ben Lamm 47:46 Uh, 80 pounds.... um, about 5.5 feet. Um-

Joe Rogan 47:50 And the mane.

Ben Lamm 47:52 Yeah. And so, so a couple things about the wolves. Jamie, if you go back. Yeah. Uh, so we didn't know this, right? We knew that they were a Pleistocene wolf. We knew that they existed, uh, and went extinct about 12,000 years ago, um, when a lot of megafauna went extinct, like the... during kind of that Younger Dry- per- that Younger Dryas kind of cooling period. Um, they went, they went extinct as well, right? Um, and we knew... All we know, 'cause all we have is... We don't have frozen dire wolves or frozen samples. We literally just know from skeletal remains that they were 20% to 25% lo- uh, larger. They were stockier. Uh, they probably weren't as fast based on kind of their, their body weight, as a normal wolf would be. Um, but we knew that they had thicker skulls, a larger cranium, and whatnot. And we assumed that their, their f- And we did find this out in the genome, which is pretty cool, that they were white, 'cause there was like this misconception for a while that they were red because some scientist wanted to make a paper and assumed that they were red so they'd get their paper.

Joe Rogan 48:46 S- Doesn't it make sense from natural selection?

Ben Lamm 48:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:48 I mean, they're an arctic hunting animal.

Ben Lamm 48:50 Yeah. And they have this beautiful... We didn't know this, but they have this beautiful like mane-like quality to them. And when they're babies, you, you saw a couple of pictures, their fur almost feels like polar bear's. It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 48:59 Wow.

Ben Lamm 48:59 It's so, it's so cool.

Joe Rogan 49:00 Is it like polar bears in that it's hollow? Or is it not?

Ben Lamm 49:02 Uh, no, it's not. It's, it's like typical wolves, but it's incredibly thick. It grows in kind of these, these clumps. But then as they've, uh, uh, as they've grown in, they've started to get this kind of like mane to them, which is incredible.

Joe Rogan 49:14 The females as well?

Ben Lamm 49:15 Uh, well the female, she's only six weeks old, so it's too-

Joe Rogan 49:17 Oh, okay.

Ben Lamm 49:17 ... too soon to tell.

Joe Rogan 49:18 So-

Ben Lamm 49:18 But if you keep going through a couple other photos.

Joe Rogan 49:20 Wow.

Ben Lamm 49:21 Yeah, I mean, they are just... They're just beautiful. And they... I mean, it's funny. Someone actually said they, uh... on our team was like, "They almost look like Shetland pony wolves at some point," right?

Joe Rogan 49:30 Right.

Ben Lamm 49:30 Um, but they-

Joe Rogan 49:30 There's something... They're so stocky.

Ben Lamm 49:32 They're stocky. They're thicker. Um, they are... I mean, they're, they're absolutely beautiful. Um, that... So this is Khaleesi.

Joe Rogan 49:41 Aw.

Ben Lamm 49:41 So... Who looks like a baby.

Joe Rogan 49:42 Look at that little face.

Ben Lamm 49:43 And, uh, we, we nailed it. We, uh, we, we named her.

Joe Rogan 49:46 Can we hear it? Let me hear her.

Ben Lamm 49:51 We named Khaleesi for George R. R. Martin, obviously.

Joe Rogan 49:53 Obviously.

Ben Lamm 49:55 Who's an investor in Colossal.

Joe Rogan 49:56 Oh, wow. (puppy whining) Aw. Nature's cute little murderers (laughs) .

Ben Lamm 50:10 (laughs) . Well, everything in nature murders something, right?

Joe Rogan 50:11 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 50:12 Like we were...

Joe Rogan 50:13 Well, cows murder grass.

Ben Lamm 50:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:15 Uh-

Ben Lamm 50:15 And people are now saying you can hear grass and other plants like scream now (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 50:18 Yeah. Yeah, they scream (laughs) .

Ben Lamm 50:19 Yeah. So I guess, I guess (laughs) , we all are bad.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Life eats life.

Ben Lamm 50:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:23 This is, this is... I mean, that's the reason why plants have chemicals to dissuade us from eating them. What are they eating there?

Ben Lamm 50:30 Uh, so they love to chew on horns in, in the state... So we have different phases of... We- we've built a 145-page animal guide. These are actually, um, uh, different horns from different elk and other species that we're putting out there.

Joe Rogan 50:43 And they chew on it-

Ben Lamm 50:44 Or they ch- They just love-

Joe Rogan 50:45 ... like chew toys, like a dog does? Yeah.

Ben Lamm 50:46 Like a dog does, right.

Joe Rogan 50:47 So are you letting these animals kill things or are you feeding them?

Ben Lamm 50:49 So they're... So we're feeding them still. So they get a combination of bison meat, horsemeat, and some-

Joe Rogan 50:55 Do you plan on letting them kill things eventually?

Ben Lamm 50:56 So we're just about to introduce carcasses to them, so giving them part of a carcass, letting them feed, building in that f- that dynamic between the two brothers for now. And then, um... An- and they are starting to exhibit some hunting behavior.

Joe Rogan 51:09 Are you gonna let them hunt?

Ben Lamm 51:11 I mean, they're on a... Th- they are on a seemingly wild 2,000-acre preserve with just them, so they do have the ability to hunt on that preserve. But they're not doing it yet. They're starting to exhibit the, the original... The... Kinda the, the first inklings that, that it will trend toward that. But we want them to live. We want them... And we're gonna probably make two or three more. We want a, a, a solid little social pack that we can monitor, that can live a seemingly wild life, that we can understand more about them.

Joe Rogan 51:36 Wow.

Ben Lamm 51:36 It's cool. But the other thing that's, that's equally, uh, cool to it, going back to the red wolf story, um, c- can you-

Joe Rogan 51:42 Which is cr- crazy to me that you have reignited these 10,000-year-old hunting genes.

Ben Lamm 51:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:48 That they're starting to-

Ben Lamm 51:49 Including size.

Joe Rogan 51:49 Ha.

Ben Lamm 51:49 Including size. We understand more about like... We... You know, we looked at what, uh, genes made really a dire wolf a dire wolf, like what was separated. And the beautiful thing for us is that we had a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 73,000-year-old skull, so we could actually understand, uh, the genetic, uh, distan- With that much genetic distance between them, we could actually understand, uh, you know, what truly was fixed and conserved in the dire wolf genome and-

Joe Rogan 52:14 Hmm.

Ben Lamm 52:14 ... what wasn't just population genomes, right? If there's... If you and I are 50,000 years apart, we... You know, there's a lot of different mutations in that time period. But if we can then really say, "Okay, you know, what made Ben, Ben and what made JoJo... Oh, here's the overlaps," it'll allow us to really understand that-

Joe Rogan 52:28 Wow.

Ben Lamm 52:28 ... which will be awesome. It's just fascinating that the behavior characteristics are kind of baked into those genes.

Joe Rogan 52:32 They're baked in. Yeah.

Ben Lamm 52:33 And they just were dormant for 10,000 years, and now these things are waking up and we're like, "Hm." And so I was, I was like... So I was in, um... You know, 'cause I bottle-fed Romulus.

Joe Rogan 52:42 Wow.

Ben Lamm 52:42 Um, and, and Romulus was partly raised with me. I could go out to the preserve. I'd, I'd check on him quite, quite frequently. Uh, it's in the Northern United States where... We don't say where it is. But, um, mainly 'cause of we're, we're... For not just the animals' health but for human health, we... Ever since we launched the wooly mouse, we've had, um, very excited people just show up at our... Our labs are not open to the public. And we've had lots of people just show up wanting to see the mice and so, um, showing people too much of the preserve, we're always very, very nervous about. We scrub all the videos and whatnot to ensure that no one can pick it out because-

Joe Rogan 53:13 Right.

Ben Lamm 53:14 ... we, we assume people will be moderately excited.

Joe Rogan 53:16 Oh, yeah. Oh, the, the internet sleuths will try to find you.

Ben Lamm 53:20 Yeah, so we've, we've done... No- I'm not trying to challenge them but we've been... We've done everything we can to protect it.

Joe Rogan 53:25 Yeah, I understand. I mean, you have to. We... If some dude from Saudi Arabia wants a wolf... (laughs)

Ben Lamm 53:30 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:31 If somebody wants a dire wolf, well, they-

Ben Lamm 53:33 We get a lot of... We already, we already get a lot of-

Joe Rogan 53:34 ... they hire some people to come over here and kidnap a wolf.

Ben Lamm 53:35 We already get a lot of weird calls, but the, the other-

Joe Rogan 53:37 Oh, I bet you do.

Ben Lamm 53:38 The other thing though is-

Joe Rogan 53:38 Someone with deep pockets?

Ben Lamm 53:40 Oh, we get, we get-

Joe Rogan 53:40 "Make me a dire wolf, my friend."

Ben Lamm 53:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:43 "I have everything in my collection."

Ben Lamm 53:47 (laughs) They have everything. We get a lot of weird calls.

Joe Rogan 53:48 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 53:49 Yeah, from people that are like, uh-

Joe Rogan 53:50 Most people that have private zoos.

Ben Lamm 53:51 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:52 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 53:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:52 Like enormous-

Ben Lamm 53:53 In... Like in India.

Joe Rogan 53:54 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 53:55 Yeah. They have a... Th- uh, that family has like the largest private zoo and preserve.

Joe Rogan 54:00 Which is so wild.

Ben Lamm 54:01 It's so crazy.

Joe Rogan 54:02 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 54:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:02 Well, you know Texas' history with animals, right?

Ben Lamm 54:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:05 There's more tigers in captivity in private collections in Texas-

Ben Lamm 54:08 In, in Texas.

Joe Rogan 54:08 ... than in the wild.

Ben Lamm 54:09 Than in the wild of the world, yeah.Yeah, it's crazy. But I was- I was in the, um ... I was in ... So, uh, we, uh- uh, of the 2,000 acres, we have a subsec- subsection of it that's about six and a half acres where we have an animal hospital, a storm rescue s- shelter. We have a bu- a couple of natural dens that we've, uh, built for them, as well as an animal husbandry, uh, area so that that way when we want to take photos of them or video of them or do blood tests, they're in a seemingly con- more contained area. And, um, it's funny. Two weeks ago, uh, I was up there and I was actually sitting on those logs in one of those pictures, and Remus came o- Romulus, who I spent the most amount of time with. Remus came up, came pretty close, and I was able to touch him again. But I thought at that moment ... And then he kind of skittished away. I was like, "That's the last time I'm touching Remus." Like, "What am I doing?"

Joe Rogan 54:57 Right.

Ben Lamm 54:57 And- and I mean, I ... Don't get me wrong, we had our animal-

Joe Rogan 54:59 What if he decides to eat you?

Ben Lamm 54:59 Yeah. What I ... I have animal care teams there and everything. And- and they have been some- there's some level of, uh, habituation between, uh, the- the care team. They really know and love the care team. But they're still wild animals, right? And so-

Joe Rogan 55:09 And they probably hunted humans.

Ben Lamm 55:11 They, uh ... Uh, yeah. I don't- I don't- I don't ... We don't know, right? But the rise of kind of going back to their extinction, the rise of the- the change in kind of this Younger Dryas period, uh, and the change, the massive, I don't know, the ... some of the stuff that there's, like, several different prevailing theories, one of which is human predation, right? That, like, the rise of humans led to the extinction of the megafauna. That's kind of, you know, I think- I think it's the answer is probably a combination. Uh, could have there been an, you know, astrological event? Uh, there's starting to be more and more data around that. Uh, and-

Joe Rogan 55:44 I'm sure you've seen Randall Carlson talk about this.

Ben Lamm 55:46 Yeah, I've seen Randall Carlson talk about it-

Joe Rogan 55:47 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 55:47 ... Graham Hancock talk about it.

Joe Rogan 55:48 Yeah. And just the-

Ben Lamm 55:49 And- and they just get the shit beat out of them for talking about it.

Joe Rogan 55:51 The whole ... Yeah, but not anymore.

Ben Lamm 55:52 Yeah. Now, it's hard to-

Joe Rogan 55:53 You know, the Younger Dryas impact theory-

Ben Lamm 55:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:55 ... is well-respected now.

Ben Lamm 55:56 Yeah. It's ... Yeah, and it- and-

Joe Rogan 55:56 It happened.

Ben Lamm 55:57 Yeah, and it- and it definitely also happened in kind of a regional sense, right?

Joe Rogan 56:00 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 56:00 'Cause you see different ... Which-

Joe Rogan 56:02 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 56:02 ... which also tracks to the theory, right?

Joe Rogan 56:04 Yes.

Ben Lamm 56:04 So not only do you have these different layers that you can prove from a sedimentation perspective, but, you know, there was also a massive, uh, glacial lake. And- and- and some of the glaciers up there that rapidly liquified-

Joe Rogan 56:18 Right.

Ben Lamm 56:18 ... they then dumped in the ocean, that also changed ocean patterns. So you went from a period, you know, in the- that- that, um, kind of transition from Pleistocene to Holocene, you- there was this period of ex- insanely accelerated cooling, right?

Joe Rogan 56:31 Do you know how Randall came up with that idea before it was-

Ben Lamm 56:34 Uh- uh.

Joe Rogan 56:34 ... brought to ... Like, his idea is that it was an instantaneous melting of these caps b- through some sort of, uh, immense cosmic event. And millions and millions of ... Trillions of gallons of water at an insane rate ran through the land-

Ben Lamm 56:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:52 ... and just carved deep gouges into the Earth. He was on acid.

Ben Lamm 56:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:56 He was on acid when this idea came to him.

Ben Lamm 56:58 Some weird idea.

Joe Rogan 56:59 He was looking out over a ridge, he was looking at this enormous gorge, and he realized the gorge was formed by water rushing at an insane rate of speed. And then he- he started noticing that there's these huge boulders that are just out in the middle of nowhere, that were just moved by-

Ben Lamm 57:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:16 ... this immense amount of water. And then the way the ground, the- the features of the ground looks like the features that you see on sandy beaches when the tide rolls in and out.

Ben Lamm 57:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:28 And he's like, "This is cra-" And it all tracks.

Ben Lamm 57:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:31 It tracks all over the world.

Ben Lamm 57:32 It's li- it's like those ... It reminds me of those stories where they show people, like, the side of the Sphinx.

Joe Rogan 57:37 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 57:37 And they're like, "Oh, man, that's a lot of water erosion." And then they, like, flip the photo and then you see the head of the Sphinx. You're like, "That's not water erosion." (laughs) You're like-

Joe Rogan 57:44 It's Dr. Robert Schoch-

Ben Lamm 57:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:45 ... from Boston University.

Ben Lamm 57:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:46 He ... I've interviewed him.

Ben Lamm 57:48 Oh, cool.

Joe Rogan 57:48 He was the first guy to propose this. He's like, "This is thousands of years of rainfall, and we know that the last time there was rainfall like that in the Nile Valley was 9,000 years ago."

Ben Lamm 57:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:58 So the whole thing is really screwy in terms-

Ben Lamm 58:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:00 ... of like what is the timeline that this stuff was actually built? And are we just assuming because we've decided that it's 2500 BC-

Ben Lamm 58:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:08 ... that- that's it forever? And no one wants to let that go.

Ben Lamm 58:11 Well, tha- that- that ... I'm not a scientist, but that's ... And I don't come from academia. I'm just an entrepreneur that knows how to build teams of smarter people than me, and I find cool shit interesting and I try to work on it, right? And what- what's crazy to me is the academic system ... You know, once again, not an academic. I'm sure I'll get crucified for this, but I don't read the comments, so it doesn't really matter.

Joe Rogan 58:30 Oh, read the comments.

Ben Lamm 58:31 I don't read the comments.

Joe Rogan 58:31 Let's go, Ben. (laughs)

Ben Lamm 58:32 I don't ... Trust me, I don't read the comments. It doesn't-

Joe Rogan 58:33 Good for you.

Ben Lamm 58:34 I sleep quite well.

Joe Rogan 58:35 Nice.

Ben Lamm 58:36 Um, the, uh ... But- but, you know, the academics ... So we have 95 of the top scientific advisors in the world, Nobel laureates and whatnot. We've got- we fund 17 academic universities, right? All over the world. We fund 40 post-docs, right? Uh, all over the world, right? And th- they're- they're doing this. So we're very integrated with- with different ideas from- from academia and- and these scholars. And our top people that work at Colossal came from academia. So I think where we try to be very academically friendly, but they live in this world, this super kind of like fortune and glory world, where it's like it's a popularity contest if someone has a paper, 'cause their entire motivation is publish or- or perish. So one of the other things that people bitch about us is they're like, "You guys don't write scientific papers for every single thing you're doing." It's like we're not an academic university. We're not allowed. I- I don't have to write a paper on anything, ever. We do a couple here and there 'cause we want to share our knowledge with- with the community, right? But we get this feedback of like if we wrote a scientific paper for every single thing that we did that went through peer review, like, we- we would have 3,000 scientific papers and no mammoths ever, right? 'Cause we'd just be sitting around writing fucking papers all day long.

Joe Rogan 59:39 It's interesting 'cause they want to impose their idea of what you're supposed to and not supposed to do.

Ben Lamm 59:44 Well, they want to impose your- their idea that they've already established and any change to that establishment, so ...

Joe Rogan 59:50 Yeah.

Ben Lamm 59:50 So in addition to the public 95 scientific advisors ... And these are a- some of the top women and men in- in the world, right? That for- fall in all sides of the political spectrum, all side- so every single, uh, spectrum out there. They, um ... We have another probably 40 advisors that are like, "We love you."... we, just, you can't say anything because if I submit it, we know these other people don't like me. If I submit a paper, they're ... And we totally agree with you and we'll help you, but-

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Mmm.

Ben Lamm 1:00:13 ... we submit a paper, they judge my paper, it gets rejected, then I don't get my grant, so then I can't continue my research. I have to fire my post-docs. So it's a complete scam of a system, right? And so, we, we went through this phase where it's like, we didn't have enough scientists, we didn't have labs, we didn't have money, we weren't doing anything for conservation. So, we went through this whole, like, philosophical perspec- uh, uh, of these, like, these, all these things that people threw abou- threw at us, uh, from the scientific community. And some of our biggest people that hate us are people that we denied their funding. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Of course.

Narrator 1:00:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Well, the, the problem is not the scientific community. The problem is weak men. It's this, this, uh, what you see in these, these squabbles, these, like, ultra-personal squabbles, where, like, horrible vitriolic statements made about people, h- like-

Ben Lamm 1:01:00 They're just not happy people.

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 Exactly. It's the same problem with all of life. It's these bitchy little people, these bitchy little monsters, and they have taken-

Ben Lamm 1:01:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 ... over something that's incredibly important, and their work, their work, these bitchy little people, their work is incredibly important.

Ben Lamm 1:01:17 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 But at the core of their being, they're a bitchy little person.

Ben Lamm 1:01:21 And they c- and that's why, and that is why we don't have flying cars-

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 (laughs)

Ben Lamm 1:01:24 ... we don't have mammoths, and until Elon, we're not gonna live on Mars, right? And so, like, we didn't have, like, I think-

Joe Rogan 1:01:30 Well, it takes time.

Ben Lamm 1:01:30 ... it, yeah, but it, it doesn't come ... But also, academia is really focused on point solutions, not full systems, right? So if you wanna go to Mars or you wanna bring back a mammoth, you have to design the entire system, and you have to innovate across everything.

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 Right.

Ben Lamm 1:01:42 Whereas in academia, you're, you are only incentivized to get that piece of paper and get that approved.

Joe Rogan 1:01:47 Well, it's also, you're, you're dealing with grants and enormous amounts of money that gets donated and, and given to these institutions, along with a whole ideology. Like, it's not just as simple as let's follow data. It's all gotta be attached to this very left-leaning, almost preposterous in some aspects, ideology.

Ben Lamm 1:02:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:13 And everyone has to say things, as a fucking scientist, that you know is not true.

Ben Lamm 1:02:19 Y- c- you should just follow the scientific method.

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 Exactly.

Ben Lamm 1:02:20 I'm not a scientist, but we should just ... And guess what? When new data shows up that, uh, you know, changes your old data, you shouldn't get mad about that. You should celebrate it.

Joe Rogan 1:02:28 Exactly. Well, also, you have to look at all data. You know, like, uh, I don't want to get into this, but, uh, like, if you, you have, uh, uh, academics who are l- legitimate scientists and have published papers who are telling you that a man can be a woman, and which is fine in terms of, like, who you are. But now, when you're having them compete with women in sports, you've entered into n- n- nonsense land, and you're the person we're counting on to be the most intelligent person on the subject. You're trapped by an ideology that you're now w- ignoring biology in favor of sociology.

Ben Lamm 1:03:04 I just wish we could get philosophy, uh, we separate ph- like, philosophical perspectives from science. We d-

Joe Rogan 1:03:10 Yes.

Ben Lamm 1:03:10 One of the, one of the things that we fight about all the time, you know, because (laughs) it's like, once we got the scientists, and once we got the money, and once we proved that we are the most advanced, you know, synthetic biology company in the world, once In-Q-Tel, which is a, a, uh, uh, the funding arm of the CIA and other governments started investing in Colossal because of our technologies, um, and once we started to prove points, the, the last arguments that we have against some of those scientists are philosophical ones.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 Hm.

Ben Lamm 1:03:35 Right? They're like, it's not a mammoth.

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 Right.

Ben Lamm 1:03:36 It's not a dire wolf.

Joe Rogan 1:03:37 Right.

Ben Lamm 1:03:37 And it's like, this concept of speciation, uh, is a human construct that we are trying to impose on nature that flows more like a river than a rock. And there's like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:45 So, are they saying that it's not because it didn't come straight from nature, it's something that you've recreated by piecing this together with that? Like, what, what are the genes that you had to use to create a dire wolf? We didn't totally explain this.

Ben Lamm 1:03:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:57 So, you have CRISPR, you have these gene editing tools.

Ben Lamm 1:04:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 You have a good sample of DNA. How do you turn that into a wolf?

Ben Lamm 1:04:05 So, you map them, uh, next to it. And, and there was a, a study that came out about ... And once again, this goes back to the status quo of scientists, um, of academic scientists. There was a paper that came out a few years ago, because they didn't have much data, they said that, uh, dire wolves were closer related ... weren't closer related to wolves. They were closer related to jackals. And that's because at the time, they only had 0.15% of the genome, right? They just didn't have all the data. That's not negative, they just didn't have all the data. Now we know that they actually were closer related to wolves 'cause we have more data and we can tell that-

Joe Rogan 1:04:35 Which wolves?

Ben Lamm 1:04:36 Uh, gray wolves, or the d- the precursor to gray wolves, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 Mm-hmm.

Ben Lamm 1:04:39 So, um, so they were closer to, to, to the wolf a- ancestry line and kind of the broader canine group and family group.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Hm.

Ben Lamm 1:04:46 And so, what we found is O- once you do that, we start looking at all these genes and w- we start to understand what are the differences. And we started to see that in certain parts of the genome that are responsible for size, for muscle, for craniofacial, that there's differences, right? So we can start to map and say, "Okay, where are the differences between gray wolves and where are the differences between gray wolves and dire wolves?" And then with those, we have a, a lot of different tools that we can then go use to make those changes from the dire wolves in a gray wolf cell line. And so, um, and then once you go through that process, we didn't talk about this earlier, you do the same process, uh, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is effectively cloning, where you take the, uh, nucleus of one cell, you put it, that into another, uh, uh, egg cell, and then, uh, you take that embryo and you insert it into a surrogate.

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 And is this a 100% dire wolf or is this a new thing?

Ben Lamm 1:05:36 So, this is, so this goes into the philosophical thing.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 Right.

Ben Lamm 1:05:39 So if you look at speciation, right, there's basically ... The scientists don't agree on how you classify a species. So you've got certain people that'll say, "Well if it can't, if, uh, species is dictated by something that can't breed," that's literally a definition. Like, like, "If this animal can't breed with this animal, then that's its own species."

Joe Rogan 1:05:54 Hm.

Ben Lamm 1:05:54 Then you have other people, you have the paleontologists, uh, and some of them love us, like Kenneth Lacovara, who's arguably the number one paleontologist in the world that loves us. But then you have other paleontologists who just hate us, and